Another Nail In The Coffin of UK Civil Liberties

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Every story I have ever read on building a national data base of the soon to be next generation always cites enabling students to be able to buy their lunch.

I won't say does this government think we're fucking stupid because the answer is patently obvious, as patently obvious as the contempt that it holds for its citizens.

Given the UKs four million plus CCTV cameras, (includes very short clip) one for every fourteen citizens, are expected to double by 2018 one doesn't have to consult the entrails of a goat to predict where all this is heading.

When each of those eight million cameras has a facial features recognition camera alongside it then we will have the totalitarianism that this government is so blatantly trying to achieve. I say alongside but of course technologically speaking the cameras will be integral by then. (If not already.)

And having achieved this goal kiddywinks, you're fucked, you're fucked and you're living in a goldfish bowl.

I don't know why the government doesn't just have done with it and enforceably chip every sprog at birth.

And I will hazard a guess to what comes next; the surreptitious taking of DNA to expand the world's largest DNA database.

Democracy, don't you just love it?

Update: Well fancy that, whodathunkit?

The Government has admitted it wants to store patients’ DNA samples on the new NHS computer system.

Face Scanners To Be Installed In Schools

The system, which is being trialled in a UK school next week, can also be used to allow children to take out library books and buy their lunch.

It is among a host of high-tech security measures introduced in schools in a bid to keep pupils safe.

Some schools have brought in fingerprint and eye scanners, while others are planning to put radio transponder chips in pupils' uniforms to keep tabs on them.

But there are fears the technology breaches children's civil liberties.

One school installed an iris scanner in 2003 but removed it a year later after it failed to recognise some students and led to lengthy queues.

Aurora, a Northampton-based biometric firm, will exhibit its new "face recognition software" at an education technology conference in London next week.

The company has developed a prototype aimed at schools for "ultra fast student registration, easy cashless catering and secure access control".

Each system - costing around £1,000 - can verify a face in 1.5 seconds and claims to be more accurate at identifying people than a human.

Patrick Usher, the company's technical director, told the Times Educational Supplement that adapting the technology for children was a challenge as their faces changed quicker than adults.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the system would be welcomed if it cut bureaucracy - but he said: "You always seem to get queues behind security devices".

Guidance issued in 2007 gives headteachers permission to collect pupils' biometric data to use when taking the register, paying for lunch or using the library.

But civil liberties campaigners are concerned that the data could be given to police or the Government without parents' knowledge - or stolen by identity thieves.

"These systems store fingerprint templates, which are used by the police. It leaves children open to identity fraud later on," said the pressure group Leave Them Kids Alone. Source Telegraph

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